Hope in the Life of Thomas More

Authors

Thomas L. Shaffer, Notre Dame Law SchoolFollow
Stanley Hauerwas

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1979

Publication Information

54 Notre Dame L. 569 (1978-1979)

Abstract

The seduction of power is as perennial as the threat of power spurned. Power is a medium for good and evil. Lawyers and politicians and their victims—Nixon and his cronies, for examples—come and go; but the moral problems of how to use power, how to live with it and leave it behind, remain.

One way to look at the moral problem of power is to ask how a virtuous person uses power, and lives close to power, without losing the sense of self which is necessary to negotiate the temptations of power. We propose to ask that question with respect to Thomas More, in this 500th year of his birth, particularly with respect to the Thomas More of Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons. We propose to offer an account of the character necessary to maintain what Bolt's More called "that little area in which I must rule myself." We contend that consideration of More's character is a way to learn how to be honest about power and still to hope. We will try to show how More's hope involved moral and intellectual skill—skill in the use of power, skill in serving power in such a way that he was not consumed by it, and skill in knowing when to spurn power and accept the consequences.

Comments

Reprinted with permission of Notre Dame Law Review (previously Notre Dame Lawyer).

Recommended Citation

Thomas L. Shaffer & Stanley Hauerwas, Hope in the Life of Thomas More, 54 Notre Dame L. 569 (1978-1979).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/931